If anything has defined soon-to-be Prime Minister Theresa May over the last few days, it has been the subject of motherhood – or her lack of it.

May has spoken with dignity about her sadness at not being able to have children, and then the fact was highlighted in stark technicolour by her Tory leadership rival Andrea Leadsom , when she said only a mother could have a true stake in our future - leading to national uproar and, surely, her decision to step down from the Tory race yesterday.

Strangely, it’s motherhood which has ended up clinching the leadership for May.

But in fact, when it comes to the person behind the leader, it is being a daughter that has shaped her.

The only child of a vicar, it was her father’s sense of duty and commitment to helping others which affected her from a young age – she decided to become a politician aged just 12 – and instilled in her the serious minded sense of duty she holds dear today.

Theresa May as a young girl

And his Christian faith, which she also has, has made politics for her more ‘vocation’ than work, say friends.

“I grew up the daughter of a local vicar and the granddaughter of a regimental sergeant major. Public service has been a part of who I am for as long as I can remember,” she said.

May has always been disinclined to tell us too much about herself – both shy and notoriously private.

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Add to motherhood her tough talking, that inherited sense of duty, and the much-touted plaudit that she’s a competent ‘safe pair of hands’ - plus the fact she has a penchant for a nice pair of leopard print kitten heels - and that is effectively the overriding picture of our country’s leader in waiting.

Theresa May with husband Philip

“Showing that that you’re in the job and doing it, is more important than the back-story,” she once said, telling it steely straight, her trademark tone, like a headmistress in assembly.

She reiterated it again when she launched her bid to become PM last month: “I know I’m not a showy politician. I don’t tour the television studios. I don’t gossip about people over lunch...I don’t often wear my heart on my sleeve. I just get on with the job in front of me.”

Calm, competent May certainly isn’t known for her charisma. Many sources say she’s also a bit of a cold fish, too.

“Mrs May might as well be made of alabaster,” Nigel Farage wrote recently.

But clearly, Farage’s views shouldn’t always be read as gospel...

Theresa May was Conservative candidate fighting to be North West Durham MP in the 1992 General Election (Image: Mirrorpix)

Since the Brexit bombshell set her on route to Downing Street, May has revealed more about her life than she ever has before. She seems to be softening, just a little, perhaps realising that generation X Factor needs that back story.

Personal chinks in the protective armour May usually wears more tightly than her famous trouser suits, have begun to show, not least her dignified admission of sadness at not being able to have children with her banker husband Philip.

So what is the woman set to govern our country in these tumultuous times really like, and what made her into the soon to be leader she is today?

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Her vast and eclectic shoe collection – patent over-the-knee boots she wore to greet the president of the Republic of Korea in 2013, definitely included – hint there might be more to May than meets the eye.

May, who went to a regular comprehensive school, was the only child of Hubert and Zaidee Brasier, and grew up in Oxfordshire.

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“You’re supposed to behave in a particular way,” she said of being a clergyman’s child.

Her father’s influence, and the family’s faith, seems to have shaped the woman she is – someone determined to do what she feels is the right thing, however much she is mocked.

Since childhood she knew she wanted to go into politics, and cites her father’s work as inspiration. At home, she says, “You didn’t think about yourself. The emphasis was on others.”

A friend said May’s own deep religious belief makes her see her political career as: “a calling, a vocation… she doesn’t think of it as work.”

But she wasn’t allowed to bring politics home. Her father banned her as a teenager from canvassing for the Tories in their village to avoid people accusing him of political bias. Instead she ‘stuffed envelopes in the conservative office’.

May was a daddy’s girl. They used to listen to cricket test matches together.

She has revealed her icon was Geoffrey Boycott. “It was just that he kind of solidly got on with what he was doing.” Sound strangely familiar?

“I shouldn’t say it, but I probably was Goody Two Shoes,” she admitted. But if she sounds dutiful, May was clearly a sparky teen, too.

Shoes of Theresa May (Image: PA)

They are unmistakable (Image: Rex)

Conservative kitten (Image: Rex)

When her school banned girls from joining the boys on a trip to a rugby match, she rebelled. She got to go to the game. Famously, in office, she wore a t-shirt telling the world she’s a feminist.

May got into St Hugh’s College, Oxford, in 1974, to study geography.

She was always outspoken – at the student union, but also at the Edmund Burke Society. They may have drunk port, but the subjects were far from worthy. “That life’s too short for chess” was one motion. Another was “That sex is good… but success is better”. She opposed it.

Apparently, May presided over the debates waving a meat tenderiser as a gavel.

University is also where she met husband Philip, two years below her, and bonded over a shared love of cricket, friends say.

They were introduced at a Conservative Association dance, by Benazir Bhutto, later Prime Minister of Pakistan, who was killed in 2007.

Friends say she had had boyfriends before, but no one serious.

Recently she was asked what attracted her to toyboy Philip. “He was good looking and there was an immediate attraction. We danced, though I can’t remember the music,” she said.

After university, May took a job with the Bank of England before she and Philip married in 1980.

Tragically, within a year of their wedding, May lost both her beloved parents. She was only 25.

Her father was killed in a car crash. “I got a phone call saying he was in intensive care. I saw him before he died but he wasn’t able to speak,” she said.

Her mum, who had multiple sclerosis, died a year later.

Some have said Philip is in ‘awe’ of Theresa – but she has spoken emotionally of his “huge support”. “He was a real rock for me,” she said.

The couple, who live in Sonning-on-Thames, Berkshire, have, of course, faced the test of infertility, too.

She has admitted: “You look at families all the time and you see there is something there that you don’t have.”

But recently, added with trademark stoicism: “There are lots of problems people have. We are all different, we all have different circumstances and you have to cope with whatever it is, try not to dwell on things.”

Another trial has come in the form of her Type 1 diabetes.

Andrea Leadsom quits leadership race (Image: Getty)

She revealed her diagnosis three years ago, and has to inject herself with insulin four times a day. But says: “It becomes a routine part of your life - there are plenty of serious people in business with it.”

May left the Bank of England in 1985, and became a financial consultant and senior adviser on international affairs at the Association for Payment Clearing Services.

In 1986 she became a councillor in the London borough Merton, and six years later, stood in the general election. She lost, but in 1997, was elected MP for Maidenhead and joined William Hague’s frontbench opposition.

In 2010 she was appointed minister for women and equalities, and home secretary, only the second woman to ever take the post.

Her work ethic is by all accounts, relentless. “Theresa does her red boxes till three in the morning, she knows more than the civil servants do and is rarely caught out. She’s seen as a safe pair of hands,” one source has said.

There is never “an uncalculated foot put anywhere,” said another. She has been known to reply to emails on Christmas Eve.

But there have been complaints she is controlling and reports that she’s physically taken a Number 10 official by the lapels of his jacket.

But colleagues have spoken of a caring May, who texts and calls if they are unwell. “She is like a tigress looking after her litter,” one said.

Theresa May's wedding

She’s always dogged and forthright in her opinions, whether they’re popular or not.

And while her colourful footwear is often noted on, a friend once summed up the reason. “She doesn’t mind wearing something other people wouldn’t expect her to wear. It’s not an attention-seeking thing, it’s defiant: ‘I know I have a brain and I’m serious so I can wear pretty shoes’.”

Her hobbies and interests doesn’t exactly detract from the ‘goody two shoes’ image. Apparently her favourite tipple is St Clements with lemonade, she never swears, she prefers to push a trolley around a supermarket rather than shopping online, and she stores those outlandish shoes, sensibly, in see-through plastic boxes.

But if nothing else, her views on TV chefs are a sure sign you cannot always judge a book by its cover.

“I will not allow a Delia Smith cookbook in my house!” she once admitted. “It’s all precise with Delia. With somebody like Jamie [Oliver], you don’t actually have to worry if you’ve got one little bit of bicarb wrong.”